A kinder, gentler turn to the gender wars? Column

Glenn Harlan Reynolds
8:46 a.m. MST June 30, 2014

Men and women need to discuss gender issues. One can't hear what the other doesn't say.

The First International Conference on Men’s Issues touched on many topics, including the treatment of men in the media. Dads are often depicted as bumbling losers, such as the one portrayed by Seth Rogen in the movie “Knocked Up” with Katherine Heigl.(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Are we coming to a truce in the gender wars? Or just opening a second front? Or, perhaps, actually starting to talk to each other?

Those are the questions I was asking myself as I attended the First International Conference on Men's Issues in Detroit last weekend. And, to be honest, I'm still not sure. But it's certainly true that the discussion is expanding, and I'm enough of a believer in discussion and engagement to think that's a good thing.

The first thing that struck me about the conference — both the speakers and the attendees — was how diverse the crowd was. (Full disclosure: I was there as a tag-along spouse while my wife spoke about her gender relations book, Men on Strike.) There were plenty of women there, which I suppose should be no surprise, as there are plenty of men at conferences on women's issues. There's even a women's group called The Honey Badger Brigade that supports men's rights.

There were also a lot of African-Americans — or, in the case of Canadian Sen. Anne Cools, African-Canadians. But it turns out, as we heard from speakers like Fred Jones, the victims of the gender war are disproportionately black, because black men are more likely to be jailed for failure to pay child support, or on charges of domestic violence.

Much of the talk revolved around domestic issues, which is to be expected, since that's where the rubber meets the road on gender issues and the law. Paternity fraud activist Carnell Smith talked about how many men — and, often, boys — are tricked into paying child support for kids that aren't even theirs. In most states, this obligation won't be discharged even if DNA tests prove that the fraud victim isn't the father, though legislation in Georgia and a few other states (pushed by Smith) has changed that.

British activist Erin Pizzey — founder of the first shelter for battered women in Britain — noted that women are as violent in relationships as men (some evidence suggests that they're becoming more so) but that law enforcement, courts and legislators continue to assume that men are always the aggressors. Indeed, another speaker, Barbara Kay, noted that things like rape and domestic violence are now portrayed on a "continuum" where men are concerned, so that a harsh word can be treated as on the "domestic violence continuum" or a lustful glance placed on the "rape continuum."

Many men, says Pizzey, are in relationships with violent and abusive partners, but have nowhere to turn: Shelters for men are effectively nonexistent, and the attitude of law enforcement and others is generally that a woman who is abused by a violent husband is a victim, while a man abused by a violent wife is a loser and a wimp — though, in fact, such men often stick around to protect their children from abuse by their violent partners.

Treatment of men in the media was also a big topic: Everyone is familiar with the way men, especially dads, are treated as bumbling losers in TV sitcoms and commercials, and the news media are generally much quicker to cover violence affecting girls than boys. (When the Nigerian terror groups Boko Haram kidnapped a group of girls, it got international attention and a hashtag campaign spearheaded by first lady Michelle Obama. When Boko Haram had burned a bunch of boys alive earlier, nobody much noticed.)

But although the specifics were interesting, the thing that struck me most about the gathering was the palpable lack of gender tension. Men and women at this conference seemed to be on the same page, and the same team, in a way that seems almost surprising in these gender-divided times. Maybe that's because gender-talk, long a female domain, is also now about men. As another speaker at the conference, Warren Farrell, said, women can't hear what men don't say. So it's good that men are speaking up. As Farrell concluded in a Friday night dinner speech, the goal is "not a men's movement, not a women's movement, but a gender liberation movement."

With men and women both talking and listening, it gave me some hope that perhaps we'll see something new, and better, in the politics of gender. Will this spirit be able to overcome the politicized divisiveness that marks today's gender discussion? If enough men and women of good will come together, it just might.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.